Honestly, compentcy around the product line and customer base, humility to reach out to the experts in the company for decisions, industry connections, actually being available and listening to employee feedback and confidence in decisive action born out of the latter items.
Long term strategic thinking, experience to understand when trends and short-term solutions would be long-term mistakes, and the ability to avoid directly questioning someone with a skillset they don’t have themselves about technical or complex issues.
Go through an intermediary. Like a department head.
The developers, engineers, and architects don’t need your help, they need you to set logical long-term goals, hire good department heads, and schmooze with other CEOs in the same space.
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff? It doesn’t have to be a meeting with presentations, expectations and all that. Don’t you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
You do to some extent, mainly to verify that the technical aspects underpinning the decision is sound. However:
- By going past the department head, you are cutting out the person who is likely going to be responsible in implementing the decision. It can be frustrating implementing a decision that you had little input on.
- The technical expert may not fully understand the non-technical ramifications of a decision. What sounds like a small change could end up costing millions or have regulatory implications.
That’s right, it’s certainly not a good idea to leave the head of department out of the loop - this position should definitely be informed about every relevant process. I just think that it’s in everyone’s interest if senior management can be seen by the “common people” from time to time. It shows appreciation for the work and opinions of all employees and is also a good opportunity to make sure that no important aspects or overly technical details may have been lost on the way from the head of department to the executive floor. Just as you say.
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
I mean questioning as in second-guessing the people who actually know stuff. Not asking experts for their honest thoughts.
Don’t you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?
Management is one thing - C-levels is yet another kettle of fish.
In my experience C-levels rarely want the technical answer to a question, and will be personally insulted / defensive if the answer is something they don’t understand. And they will ask their questions in such a way as to insult the expert. Two negative results that don’t help the business in any way.
But Dept heads and the PM office will often be able to explain why certain choices were made, and how that aligns with the business needs, without the complexities that cause misunderstanding between two people of such wildly divergent skillsets.
Now if the CEO can also write the code, or run the wetlab instruments, and really does want the nitty-gritty, complex technical answer, that is a different story. And rarely the case in my career.
A C-suite executive isn’t making decisions from a technical point of view. They have to balance their decisions across the counsel of several experts in their fields to choose the best option, with those recommendations constantly in conflict.
A C-suite executive is likely going to focus more on the impacts of the decision made, which can be a far different conversation than a technical expert is used to having.
I think we agree. CEO should not be making decisions from a technical point of view, so they should not be second-guessing the technical people.
I’m at the stage of my career that pretty much every job I take, I report directly to the CEO. And the difference between what they should do and what they actually do is why I made my statement at the top of this thread.
The best CEOs I’ve seen (across all sizes of corporations) have a passion for the product/services they sell and the customers they sell to.
Be competent at what your company actually does (as opposed to viewing everything through spreadsheets). View people as assets not as cost factors. See it as your job to empower your employees to do what they’re good at. Have a long term perspective of how you want to develop the company and what you see as success factors (as opposed to just staring at quarterly numbers). tl;dr: don’t be an MBA.
This.
Or a dead one
look up a guy named Dan Price. Dude saw his Ice Cream company failing and chose to slash his pay exponentially to offer living wages and benefits to everyone else, and business fucking boomed for it. There are literal chapters in economics textbooks about what he did.
Unfortunately, that dude was relatively recently charged with SA allegations / rape.
His wife also accused him of beating her.
I believe charges were dropped but it definitely cast a shadow over his public good guy persona.
It speaks a lot about the justice system fairness that even if charges dropped no one believes it.
Typically I agree but I believe this was repeat allegations from multiple parties. If it was only one person and it was dropped, maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But fool me twice, shame on me.
That part is less about the justice system and more a likely triangulation of him probably being not so great, at best. Plenty of people got charges dropped or “redeemed” on a technicality who are definitely guilty.
Transparency.
This company I used to work with had a monthly townhall where everyone could learn how things were going (good or bad), long term and short term plans, and so forth.And during a downturn in 2020, things went badly, and there was open and honest information about it all. To paraphrase: “We cannot say now that there won’t be layoffs. But we will do everything we can to avoid it through other cost saving measures. This includes cutting executive pay by 20% as of immediately.” While there ended up being layoffs (which included severance packages), the pay cuts never hit any of us working “on the floor” - top brass only.
Overall, it was a company I enjoyed working for. Sadly they were acquired by a competitor last year, and that business culture came to an end. I left for greener pastures a few months ago.
That sounds like a good employer with some reasonable management. What industry was that, if you don’t mind me asking?
Offshore seismic survey
Ha, that is quite niche
Screw the specialists and never hire again in your lifetime, because most of them know each other right?
Pretty much, yeah. I’m now in the fourth such company, working with people I worked with in the previous two. I’m working on convincing a colleague I first worked with in 2008 to come on over.
Basically, it’s a small pool of people who know the stuff well. We change employers now and then, but you always run into a familiar face in far corners of the world.
Thx
